Mars Curiosity Rover hits cruising speed — up to 40 metres a day — in 8-km trip up Mount Sharp

The Mars Curiosity Rover is finally getting around to the ultimate purpose of its mission: driving the eight kilometres up the Red Planet’s Mount Sharp. If it’s lucky, it may make it up there sometime this year.

“We’re hitting full stride,” Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. “We needed a more deliberate pace for all the first-time activities by Curiosity since landing, but we won’t have many more of those.”

Of course, the breakneck pace that Erickson mentioned is relative: The rover moved 18 metres on Friday and another 40 metres on Monday. It will likely take the bulk of the rest of the year to complete the eight kilometre trip. And that isn’t just because the Curiosity is basically a giant RC car that’s (at a minimum) four light minutes away from Earth at any given moment. The rover is also stopping and smelling the metaphorical roses along the way.

“We don’t know when we’ll get to Mount Sharp,” Erickson said. “This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn’t mean we’re not going to investigate interesting features along the way.”

The team has already targeted three areas for investigation along the way, including “a layered outcrop called ‘Shaler’ and a pitted outcrop called ‘Point Lake.'”

The mission to Mount Sharp itself is part of Curiosity’s broader goal of understanding if Mars ever held life.

Mount Sharp rises about 5.5 kilometres above the Gale Crater, slightly lower than the largest mountains on Earth (Mount Everest is 8.8 kilometres tall). The largest mountain in the solar system is the 26 kilometre tall Olympus Mons, also on Mars.

“Images of Mount Sharp taken from orbit and images Curiosity has taken from a distance reveal many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved,” NASA said.